Published 3:48 pm, Sunday, May 15, 2011

Midland firefighters have been gearing up for what the department calls "summertime special victims" by performing aerial training.

The training continued Thursday at Jal Draw near West Wadley Avenue and Ward Street. The department's B Shift practiced rescuing various types of injured patients from inside the draw.

"These types of techniques are rarely used for real emergencies," said Captain Aaron Cox. "But that only further underscores the need to train. We'd rather work out problems in training than have them during a serious emergency."

The objective was to aerial-lift first responders by ladder truck over the blockades from the surface roads into the draw to save a simulated flash flood victim stranded atop a vehicle and to save someone with physical injuries, like those commonly seen by skateboarders who use the draws as a sort of half-pipe.

Besides training rarely used techniques, Cox and Battalion Chief Ken Whiting wanted the responding firefighters to train out of normal position to prepare for a worst case scenario. Cox said it is department policy always to train one position above and two positions below.

The first exercise was to save a simulated victim caught in the wake of a flash flood. A first responder was tethered underneath the ladder truck's bucket and moved into position over the stranded motorist. Rather than using the mechanics of the ladder truck to lower the firefighter to the motorist, several firefighters on the surface street used rope and pulley systems to manually lower the first responder.

Cox said firefighters always prefer using manual methods because technology has the possibility to break down when needed most.

Once the aerial rescuer was lowered into the draw, he connected the stranded motorist to another tether and the ladder truck spirited the pair up and away from the draw, back to the safety of the surface street.

Several of the firefighters talked about the ease of the maneuver but all realized that in emergency conditions there would be dark skies, heavy rain and high winds.

The second exercise was a more difficult task. It required firefighters to connect a gurney to the tether underneath the ladder. To ensure the patient is thoroughly connected, it requires a procedure with several steps and many harnesses and knots.

Fire Capt. Robert Wade said if the same scenario were to happen right now, they simply would have placed the patient in the gurney and brought it up the slanted hill. But because of the construction on the Jal Draw to make it deeper and to eliminate the slope, other procedures would need to be practiced for the future, he said.

The construction project will cost about $2.5 million. Once completed, the draw will be deeper and the water current will be faster because of reduced resistance to increase the amount of water drained from surface streets.

After a little bit of maneuvering around the power lines and working out the physics of the pulley system between an anchored position and a moving focal point, the firefighters brought the rescuer and the patients out of the draw.

In the end, Cox said the exercise was a success but added that he hopes his guys won't have to use the training this year.